Children Of God | Ben Foote

So.

I love this truth, right?

We all need rescue. Let's sing this next part.

Glory I needed.

In.

On.

Let give God some praise.

Today.

Welcome to Hope Community Church. We are so glad that you are here with us.

We're gonna continue to worship our faithful Father.

Let

let you,

let you.

Gonna.

Is such a faithful father

who say thank you.

Today.

We're gonna continue to worship today.

But.

I just wanted to read this verse over.

Its Psalms 23 6 and it just says,

surely his goodness and his mercy will follow us for

all of the days of our lives.

And that we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,

until wherever you may find yourself today.

Let's stand in confidence together that surely his goodness

and his mercy will follow us no matter where we may find ourselves.

And so as we continue to sing,

we're gonna believe that truth and that promise together that he won't fail.

He will never give up on you.

We.

Had declare that together. Lord, we love you.

He, he's faithful through.

So why would he fail? He

that.

He.

So I won't.

On you.

And

I.

You. So.

Everything we have today, he's worthy

of all of our

soul. Oh don't Soul.

Oh Soul. Oh, don't you get

Soul.

Hall, hall.

Come on, let's keep giving God some praise. Come on, let's give God some praise.

Thank you Lord. I love that song.

Sometimes regardless of your situation, you have to tell your soul, come on,

get up. Don't be discouraged. Praise the Lord.

'cause surely his goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and

I will dwell in the house of Lord. It's good to be together.

Hope Community Church. It's good to have the family gathered together.

Lift up the name of Jesus, the king of kings and the Lord of Lords,

who right now is seated at the right hand of God,

reigning and ruling and in control of the entire universe. Yes,

even in an election year, he's in control of the entire universe.

Jesus is king and he is already one man. It's so good to be together.

If it's your first time here, welcome. My name is Rob. Uh,

we'd love to meet you. We have an area that we call next steps.

And it's a place where you get to kind of come here about the family here,

about what's going on here. You can, uh,

learn how to take some of your next steps.

Get plugged in to the life and rhythm here at Hope Community Church.

It's an powerful weekend at Hope. We are celebrating baptisms,

baptisms across all of our campuses,

people who have chosen to be obedient to Christ through the act of water

baptism. And it's so awesome to see that our mobile campuses,

they have like a special gathering on Saturday and obviously all across our

campuses on Sunday will have baptisms.

And we encourage you to celebrate with those who take that step of faith

by being baptized. Now, one more thing before you take your seat.

We here at Hope partner with something called Homework Club.

Three of our campuses participate in this thing called Homework Club.

And if you don't know what that is,

what that is is it's free tutoring for students all across the triangle.

And this year already on a weekly basis,

homework Club helps a hundred students a week. We are, yes,

you can celebrate. We,

we help a hundred students a week through giving free tutoring.

And we have some pretty powerful stories that are coming out of this thing

called Homer Club.

So what I want you to do is I want you to take a seat and check out this story

about Homer Club. Welcome to Hope Community Church.

Homework Club has helped my son by giving him additional support with some of

the homework tasks and it has given him additional friends. Um,

and it also provides him with community.

My parents usually watched my son while I worked and so it wasn't very

effective for them to be his, uh, online teachers, per se.

Um,

so I got linked up with them and we have been here ever since and love it.

This is the place that she wants to go versus school . She loves it.

She loves everybody here and she loves the fact that she can pray and stuff

because I've bought her up to pray and she just loves the fact of her coming

here. She skips coming in the door. .

My favorite part about Homework Club is seeing how the kids grow,

not just in homework,

but with Jesus and with relationships with other adults that they see someone

else pouring love into them and that they see, um,

someone else they can count on in their lives.

I'm watching them be able to be encouraged that they're superstars and that

they are really, um, special. And,

and they said that they were accomplishing a lot, even though it may seem just,

just something very simple.

And when they learn something or they get to know you, they, in the beginning,

they're very standoffish, then they get to know you. They feel involved.

Homework club and serving is different because it's here are the people

being the hands and feet of Jesus showing up every week.

Middle schoolers and high schoolers who are failing courses will

pass everything, you know, at the end. It's just incredible. Their confidence,

um, their hope. Uh, it's just like night and day. So yeah,

that's definitely my favorite thing.

If you have the knowledge in,

in your time and your offering and your caring and your support, come on.

It's a place where they can use your support.

I was raised that you don't just go to church. You go to church and serve.

I've enjoyed the math and I, I'm pretty good at explaining it to people.

So that's helped me use the talent that God gave me. Now,

don't ask me to spell.

A waiting list of kids that want to come and be a part of what we're doing and

they're begging to get in and, and,

and we are short of what we need to be able to staff and be able to support

those kids. So I said that's, that's our biggest need is,

is to be able to just have people that are willing to say, yes, I will.

Me as a mom,

I know that there are some things that I can do and I know that there are some

things that I can't do,

but knowing that I can find support outside of myself to help my kid was the

best decision I ever made.

Awesome. Hey, hope. How we doing? We good? Good.

Oh, you're great. Awesome. Hey, uh,

hopefully I'm a familiar face to some of you at this point. If not,

my name is Ben. I'm a pastor based out of Colorado.

I've had the awesome opportunity to spend a bunch of weekends here at Hope

Community Church. And as always, I'm very honored to be here.

Very thankful to be here. So thanks for having me. Um,

I'd love to meet you after this too. I'll be wandering around aimlessly,

so just come find me and say, Hey, um, but let's get started.

We're in this series right now where you're studying through Romans chapter

eight, like literally verse by verse. Okay?

And that might sound like a little bit random to some of us, like,

but I promise your teaching team didn't like, you know,

close their eyes and flip to a random page and then put their finger down and go

like Romans eight. It's not random. Instead Romans eight is a very big deal,

okay? Out outside of the gospels,

like the four biographies of Jesus' life in the New Testament,

the book of Romans is like, it's like the high point of the New Testament.

And then within the book of Romans, Romans chapter eight is right in the middle.

And it's the high point of the book of Romans. Romans eight is a very big deal,

right? And it's a letter that Paul's writing. And, and in Romans eight,

Paul is writing with authority and conviction and he's driving home the

promises that you and I can count on after we've put our faith in Jesus.

He's writing with passion, it's written with a sense of freedom and victory.

Romans chapter eight, on a good day,

it's like you can go to it to find the words you were looking for in order to

thank Jesus for your good day. And then on your worst days,

Romans eight reminds you that you're no longer condemned or defined by your

worst days.

Romans eight is simply one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written

and it's very much worth a read. And so we're gonna continue today,

verse by verse studying through Romans chapter eight.

Today we're gonna cover Romans, uh, eight 12 through 17.

And in this section of Romans,

Paul is trying to assure us of a promise that you'll see all throughout the

Bible. It's a,

a promise of a new reality that should fundamentally reshape the way we approach

God and approach ourselves and approach other people.

It's one of the greatest aspects of what we call the good news, the gospel.

I'm gonna kind of spoiler alert,

I'm just gonna tell you the promise that Paul's trying to assure us of right off

the bat. He, he sums it up pretty succinctly in a different letter in Galatians.

Here's the promise. Paul says, you are all sons,

or in this case sons or daughters of God through faith in Christ

Jesus. That's the promise.

The promise is that when you've put your faith in Jesus,

you become a literal son or daughter of the literal God.

And it's incredible and it's like the goodest of good news, right?

And then at the same time, here's my hunch.

My hunch is that most of us don't believe that.

Or maybe this is a better way of saying it.

This is how it feels in my life at least. It's like I think maybe I believe it,

but I struggle to truly grasp it.

Like to truly completely grasp it. It's almost something theoretical for me.

It's like I think I understand it with my mind,

but my heart hasn't truly captured the idea that I'm a literal

son of the living God. Why? Well,

I'll speak for just myself.

There's a bunch of reasons why I struggle to believe this and and to grasp it.

One of them is because it just seems like almost too good to be true.

But then more than that, more often it's more just 'cause I know myself,

I know all of my own failures and all of my shortcomings, right?

And I know the dark recesses of my heart that I'm trying to keep hidden and

secret and I know all of my doubts, I know all my weaknesses on top of this.

I know that God knows about all of these parts of my life.

And so for me it's like there's just a lot of days where I think that okay,

if I truly am a son of God, then I'm a bad son, right?

Like I picture in God's family,

I'm like the one relative at Thanksgiving dinner who showed up and everyone was

like kind of hoping I wouldn't show up, right?

Like I'm like the disheveled guy at the family reunion who doesn't get any of

the inside jokes. And then if God is my father,

then sometimes I picture like he's sitting at the head of the table trying to

avoid eye contact with me. 'cause it's like, yeah, I'm one of his sons,

but like I'm nowhere near his favorite, right? I'm like a problem child.

I don't struggle to believe that God loves me.

I struggle to believe that God likes me because a good father likes

his sons and daughters. And if I'm being honest,

most days I don't really even enjoy my own company.

And so it's hard for me to picture that a good and perfect God could look at

someone like me and say, with pride that's my son.

It's just hard for my heart to grasp that reality.

And I don't think that I'm alone in this. If you're being honest with yourself,

and it's okay to be honest with yourself right now,

like this hour every week that we call church is the place to get

honest with your soul. And I think that if we're being honest,

many of us struggle to truly grasp that you are a son or a daughter of

the living God. It's just hard to wrap your mind around to,

it doesn't help that we live in a world and culture that loves rejection,

okay? Rejection is very commonplace in in our culture.

Like think about it from the big societal level. You got like social media,

which is a roller coaster of feeling accepted one minute and then you feel

rejected the next, if you're a junior or senior in high school,

you're starting the process of sifting colleges, right?

Like the ones that you think might accept you and you're separating 'em from the

ones that you're pretty sure will reject you.

Anyone who's gone through the soul numbing season of job hunting,

you know that being rejected from a job,

even if it's one you weren't really even excited about in the first place,

being rejected from it like hurts for weeks and weeks.

Just a lot of rejection in our culture. In fact, we love rejection so much.

We made it a hobby, we gave it a cute nickname and we called it cancel culture.

All right? On top of this, that's just society at large. On top of this,

a lot of us have struggled through rejection.

Most of us have on a very intimate level, right?

Maybe you were rejected by your husband or your wife when you got divorced or

you've been rejected by your son or daughter, they don't call anymore.

Or maybe you were the kid who was rejected by your parents and you still

struggle with a sense of abandonment or you were rejected by your friends and

you still feel lonely all of the time.

Like there's not a single one of us on this planet who hasn't struggled

through rejection. I don't care who you are. In fact, to,

to prove this point, like if we can just for just like two seconds,

treat politicians not like cartoon characters,

but instead like human beings who flawed though they are,

are made in the image of God. Well then to prove this point,

one of the most powerful people in the entire world,

the current president of the United States of America is sitting in a room with

his family wrestling through feelings of rejection.

Every one of us just has struggled with rejection deep down in our bones.

That's because every relationship that you and I have in this life,

every relationship has a line. And if you cross that line,

then the relationship is over.

And so then we start to assume that probably a relationship with God functions

in the same way, right?

And then we go on to assume that probably I've crossed that line at some

point in my life.

And this assumption leads to like terminal shame and fear,

okay?

Shame over who you are and what you've done and then fear that God is going to

reject you because of who you are and what you've done. It's a,

it's a very big deal that you and I grasp the reality

that we are sons and daughters of the living God.

It's a big deal when we do grasp it. Well then,

like Leon talked about last week, that's when we're free to live in freedom.

But whenever we don't grasp that reality,

it's always a path to shame and fear of rejection.

Just a, it's a very big deal. And in Romans eight 12 through 17,

Paul understands how big a deal it is.

And so he just spends some time trying to fight off our fear of rejection

by trying to assure us of our new identities in Jesus Christ.

And that's what we're gonna cover today, Paul,

trying to assure us of our new identities.

So let's dig into Romans eight, 12 through 17. We're gonna go verse by verse.

We'll start in verse 12 and just like do an old school Bible study together.

So Romans eight 12, Paul writes this. He says,

therefore brothers, we have an obligation,

but it's not to the sinful nature, to live according to the sinful nature.

That's our first verse. Uh, again, what is the therefore,

therefore well remember the very first verse of Romans eight.

You talked about it last weekend. This is the,

the first verse is like the thesis of all of Romans chapter eight.

I'll remind you what it is. Romans eight, one, Paul says,

therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

It's like the thesis of Romans chapter eight, okay Paul. Paul says,

if you've put your faith in Jesus,

then condemnation or rejection from God is now no longer

possible for your life. That's the thesis. And so then in verse 12,

what that we just read together, Paul says, because of that wonderful truth,

you and I now have an obligation.

There's something you and I have to do.

We're not doing it to earn a relationship with God.

We're doing it in response to our relationship with God.

What is our obligation when Paul says it's not an obligation to the sinful

nature to live according to that,

instead we have an obligation to something different. Here it is again. He says,

therefore brothers, we have an obligation.

But it's not to the sinful nature to live according to the sinful nature.

'cause if you do that, if you live according to the sinful nature, you'll die.

But if,

if by the Spirit you will put to death the misdeeds of the body,

if you do that,

then you will live because those who are led by the spirit of God are

sons of God.

And we're gonna just basically park here for most of our time together

before we continue reading our verses in Romans eight.

Because if we misunderstand these verses right here,

then our fear of rejection is gonna wind up feeling a lot worse instead of

feeling better. And so what is Paul saying here? Well,

for us to start to understand what he's saying,

it's helpful to kinda work through the verses backwards. Okay?

So remember the last verse that we just read? Paul said,

those who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. Okay?

What? What does Paul mean? Well, Paul's basically going, he's going, okay,

how can you know how,

how can you have assurance that you're truly a son or daughter of the living

God? Paul says,

you can be assured that you're a child of God if you are being led by the spirit

of God.

Well now the follow-up question if you're anything like me at least is

immediately like, well, how can I be sure if I'm being led by the spirit of God?

And that's a question that Paul answered in the verse right before that one.

Paul says that one of the ways that you and I can be sure that we're being led

by the spirit of God is if by the spirit you put to death the

misdeeds of the body. And this is where I want to be very clear,

try to be very careful in how I explain these verses.

Part of it is because, you know, it's just the language is a little bit older.

So sometimes stuff like this goes in one ear and out the other.

But the bigger deal is that this is where for thousands of years,

Christians typically put the cart before the horse, right?

This is when we hear verses like that, we start freaking out.

We start telling ourselves like, okay, wait a minute.

Is is Paul saying that for me to become a child of God,

I first have to put to death every aspect of sin in my life?

Is that what Paul is saying? Listen, if that's what Paul was saying,

then outside of Jesus,

there wouldn't be one child of God to have ever walked this planet because

outside of Jesus, there has been no perfect person to walk on this planet.

So they can't be what Paul is saying. And so,

but what is Paul saying? And to figure that out,

we have to be word nerds for like 30 seconds and be like ripping a bandaid off.

I'll be really quick.

But we have to understand that in the verses that we just read in the original

Greek, every single verb is present tense. You're like,

so what? Right? Here's why it's important.

Every verb is relating to ongoing continuous action.

In other words, maybe a,

a better way of understanding that those verses for our modern ears would be to

say it something like this. Paul says,

if you're continually just like routinely living according to the

sinful nature, you'll die. But if on the other hand,

by the spirit you are continually putting to death the misdeeds of the

body, you'll live. In other words, Paul's saying,

we're not finished works, we are works in progress.

And what Paul's saying is he goes,

if you just kind of continually allow yourself to settle into sin,

you just routinely choose to make peace with the dark parts of yourself.

If you just choose to disobey God and go like, this is who, who I am,

and I don't care what God has to say. If that's like the more, uh,

constant action, the routine action in your life,

you're choosing a life of death. But then Paul says, on the other hand,

if you're continually at least trying to put up

a good fight against your sinful nature,

if your heart of hearts hates when you screw it all up,

and if your heart of hearts truly desires to try to walk like Jesus walked,

he says, if that's you,

then you can rest assured that you're being led by the spirit of God,

which means you are one of his kids.

And so to sum all of that up, according to Paul,

putting up a good fight against sin in your life is one of

the hallmarks of the sons and daughters of God.

And to quote one of my favorite teachers,

his name is John Piper in Romans eight,

Paul's not even saying that you and I have to have any particular level of

success in this fight. So Paul,

Paul's not saying you become a child of God as soon as you KO

the three biggest sins in life, right?

You become a child of God as soon as you're, you know, like sex,

drugs and rock and roll or whatever. He's not saying that. Instead,

what Paul is saying is that you are a child of God if you are in the

fight period.

Even if you lose most of the rounds in this fight,

you are a child of God. He's saying that a,

a child of God is not marked by undefeated success in the

fight against sin. Instead,

a child of God is marked by at least an undefeated desire for

success in the fight against sin.

And this is where some of us you might be going like, well,

this is starting to sound like heresy, right? This is,

this doesn't sound like the version of the Bible that I grew up with. Um,

it's like, yeah, that's because for thousands of years,

people who do the job that I'm doing right now,

we've just made it a habit of like royally screwing up Jesus's

message of grace and forgiveness. And more importantly,

I'm not saying anything right now that is inconsistent with

what Paul has already said in the first seven chapters of Roman

Romans. Uh, I'll prove it to you now. Okay? Romans chapter seven,

the one right before what we're studying through verse by verse,

here's what Paul, he,

he describes what his own life looks like on a daily basis as a

son of God. Look at this. This is Paul. He says,

I know nothing good lives in me, nothing good lives in me.

That is in my sinful nature. I have the desire to do what is good,

but it's like I just, I can't, I cannot carry it out.

And what I do is not the good that I wanna do.

Instead the evil that I don't want to do,

this is what I keep on doing for some reason.

And so I find this law at work in my life. It's like whenever I want to do good,

evil is right there with me. And in my inner being,

in my heart of hearts, I delight in God's law. I wanna live that way,

but I see another law at work in the members of my body and it's waging war

against the law of my mind.

And it's making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

What a wretched man I am who will rescue me from this body of death.

Thanks speed of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Paul says, you want to know what a day in the life of a son of God looks like?

It looks about like this. And then that's what he says.

And doesn't that immediately sound more like your real life?

More than the story of like ever since I started following Jesus,

my greatest sin is that I only pray for seven hours a day instead of eight.

Right? Like,

I know I can't be the only one in this room who hears those words from

Paul and feels relieved.

It's like finally someone gets what my real life is like.

Paul never presented his own life as a happily ever after

story. He, he didn't sanitize it.

He never presented his life as a story of I met Jesus and then I was

miraculously healed of all sin and struggle and doubt and darkness. Instead,

his story is more like your story. It's more like my story.

Paul's story is a story about a man who was a mess and then he met Jesus and

then he mostly stayed a mess except now he was a mess

who was loved and forgiven and befriended and fruitfully

leveraged by Jesus.

Paul realized that Jesus' grace in the midst of his own brokenness

was the good news that he had to share with the world. And again,

some of us like we just struggle with it. And so we hear that and,

and we're going, wait, so is Paul saying that we can be Christians,

like we can even be like you can be a Paul level Christian and have that daily

struggle of good and evil in your heart. Uh, and wait is,

is Paul saying that you can even lose that struggle on most days

like Paul said he does.

And you can still be a Christian and it's like, guys, yes.

What did you think the gospel was? That is the gospel.

The gospel is not that you need to be perfect on your own power.

The gospel is that you need to be forgiven by someone else's power and you have

been, that is the gospel.

The gospel is that Jesus loves us just like he loves Paul,

which is to say he loves us in the midst of and in spite of our

brokenness. The gospel is not a story that goes like this.

I met Jesus and then my whole life became spiffy clean and perfect. No,

instead the gospel is a story that goes like this. I am a total mess,

but I have met the one who is not and his name is Jesus.

And I don't know how he's gonna do it,

but I do believe that he's going to finish a good work that he started in me.

That's the gospel.

And and that's the hope that you can clap for the gospel. Yeah,

that's the gospel.

That's the hope that that Paul's trying to like shout from the rooftops in our

section of Romans eight today. Paul's going, Paul, he's he's going,

how can you be sure that you're a son or daughter of the living God?

If you're being led by the spirit,

how can you be sure that you're being led by the spirit?

If you have the desire at least to put up a good fight

against the sin in your life? He goes,

that's the sign that you are a child of God. If you're just putting up a fight,

even if it's a sloppy uncoordinated fight,

even if you mostly wind up kind of bloodied and beat up,

even if when the bell rings at the end of every single day,

you're just barely making it back to your corner.

Putting up a fight is a hallmark of God's children.

We don't run from the fight, we don't cave to the fight.

Instead we show up and and some days you're gonna win the battle

against your sinful nature. And those are great days. Those are uplifting days.

You should be thankful for those days. It's just that many days,

maybe even most days, you are just gonna get whooped.

And on those days, the spirit gives you the power to pray and say to God,

I lost that round. I'm sorry, forgive me. And he does.

Uh, on most days you're just gonna get laid out flat.

But through the power of the Holy Spirit, God's children,

whenever they get knocked out flat,

we always get back up and we always keep swinging.

Greatest compliment I have ever received in my life hands down came in second

grade, okay? I, my two best friends were Brady and Bracken. They were twins.

And one day Brady was gonna get in a fight with the school bully Preston at

recess, like old school, second grade, like, I'll see you at recess.

And Brady chose for his backup. He chose his brother Bracken and he chose me.

All right. Later that night, Brady's mom asks him and she goes,

why did you choose Ben to come to this fight with you?

He's one of the smallest of all of your friends. And Brady replied, yeah,

but Ben has big heart . It's the greatest compliment I've ever received.

All right? I'm still, honestly,

I'm still trying to live my life to live up to Brady's , uh, view of me.

But in the same way the sons and daughters of God,

all we need are just big hearts in this fight, in the fight against sin,

in the fight against returning to the chains that enslave us.

We just have big hearts in the fight even if we lose a lot of the rounds.

And so in Romans eight 12 through 14,

Paul says that you can be assured that you're a child of God if you're putting

up a fight. And again,

you don't even need a particular level of success in the fight.

You just need to be in the ring with your Dukes up.

And so Paul says that, and then after having said that,

the next few verses in this section of Romans eight,

he's just gonna encourage those of us who are in the ring with our dukes up,

but we feel like we're getting the tar kicked out of us most days.

And so here's what he says next. Picking up in verse 15. He says,

for you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear.

Instead, you received the spirit of sonship. And by him we cry Abba,

father. So like we talked about at the beginning of this thing,

if you feel like you are living mostly in a spirit of shame

or if you feel like you're living in a spirit of the fear of rejection all the

time, like God, God's gonna reject me.

Paul's saying You can rest assured that that's not the voice of the Holy Spirit.

That's not the spirit convicting you, okay? The Spirit convicts you.

He just never does it by lying about your identity because the Holy

Spirit doesn't grant fear. He grants sonship, he grants adoption.

The Holy Spirit never leans and whispers into your ear and says,

you went too far this time, you crossed the line and now God has to reject you.

He doesn't ever say that The Spirit is always the one whispering in your ear

trying to tell you even after a day like today, God is your father.

That's what Paul says in the next verse. He says,

the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.

And I love this picture because Paul says that's one of the Holy Spirit's jobs.

And then we know from other verses in the Bible that one of Jesus's jobs right

now is he sits at the right hand of the throne of God and he advocates

for us. So he points out God's children to him.

And so Paul gives us this beautiful picture of like two things happening at

the same time all of the time.

The first thing is Jesus sitting next to the throne of God and saying, Hey God,

do you see Ben down there? Ben is one of your sons. Isn't that awesome?

And then at the same time,

the Holy Spirit is sitting on the throne of my heart trying to crack through the

hard outer shell and tell me, Hey Ben, God is your dad. Isn't that awesome?

Paul says, those two things are happening at the same time all of the time.

It's a beautiful picture.

So Paul gives us that picture and then he wraps up this encouragement to us with

the final verse of this section. He goes, if we are children, which you are,

then you're also heirs. You're heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ,

if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his

glory. So Paul ends with this encouragement by saying,

not only are we children of God, but we are heirs to the kingdom of God.

You and I are co-heirs with Christ even, which is mind blowing.

He's saying that we're gonna inherit everything that Christ has already

inherited the Holy Spirit and access to God and the chance to call him

Father.

And the the hope that one day Jesus is gonna come back here and kind of sweep

out the floorboards and clean this place up. And when he does,

we have the hope of a redeemed body living in a redeemed world for all of

eternity. We get to inherit all of that. You and I,

like I said at the beginning of this thing,

we're not the kids at the end of the table with whom God is trying to avoid eye

contact. That's not us. Instead,

you and I are beloved sons and daughters of the living God.

And so Paul wraps his section up with that. He's basically like, boom, mic drop.

And then that's the end of our section of Romans eight for today.

Listen, we, we started this thing by talking about the,

the fact that a lot of us live in the fear of rejection, right?

Just that many of us,

we we're worried about like that somehow we're gonna do something that crosses

the line and then after we do that, God's gonna be like, that's it.

I don't wanna be your dad anymore. Or at the very least, a lot of us think like,

sure I'm maybe I'm one of God's kids, but I'm not his favorite,

like I'm on the naughty list.

But then Paul in Romans eight is he's like trying to shake us and wake us up and

he's trying to assure us beyond the shadow of a doubt and beyond the dark

shadows of of fear and rejection,

he's trying to assure us that if we've placed our faith in Jesus,

then we are sons and daughters of the living God.

And you can stop worrying about it all the time.

And so let me leave you by trying to remind us of who we are.

We are God's sons and daughters.

He knows you by name.

So like since you were in your mother's womb, he's been close with you.

He's been the one whispering grace into your ear through your whole life.

He's been the one drawing you back into his arms.

He's been shepherding you and making all of your path straight like since day

one. He's been a good father to you. And this is the gospel of grace.

Like the deep and profound mystery of the gospel of grace

is that God introduces you and he even introduces a mess like me

in the same way that he introduced Jesus to the world after Jesus was

baptized. He says, this is my son Ben,

who I love. And with him I am well pleased,

he looks at my wife and says, this is my daughter Allison,

who I love. And with her I am well pleased.

And he says the same thing about you.

God paid a very, uh,

dear price to adopt you as his kids.

Like he paid the price of his first son Jesus.

And staggering grace was purchased at a staggering price.

And so maybe it's just time that you and I kind of stagger and fall into

it.

And what I mean by that is like maybe it's just time to stop fighting against

his grace all the time.

Maybe it's time to stop trying to tell him like we can earn it on our own by

being perfectionists. Or on the other hand,

maybe it's time to stop believing that you're the first person in the history of

existence to outdo God's grace with your own brokenness.

And instead, maybe it's just time to agree with God's definition of who we are.

Maybe it's time you look in the mirror and with bewildered confidence say,

I am God's daughter or I am God's son who he loves.

And with me he's well pleased.

It sounds almost like we're not allowed to say that at first.

It sounds almost scandalous.

That's only because in a world where getting what you deserve is the cardinal

rule. In a world like that, God's grace is a scandal.

One of the the greatest books that I've ever read on grace in,

in my opinion is it's called the Ragamuffin Gospel by a guy named Brennan

Manning. And in that book,

he gives an instruction for a devotional that you can do.

It brought me to tears.

The first time I've read it brings me to tears almost every time I read it.

He says, here's the instructions. He says,

you take some verses out of Hosea chapter 11,

Hosea 11 · chapter mention

that's like a prophet book in, in the Old Testament says,

take these verses and read through them,

but then anytime you see the name Israel, like the nation of Israel,

replace that name with your own name. And then he says,

just read through it and reflect on and try to grasp the reality that

this is what God says about you today.

And they're healing words for any of us who sit in the fear

of rejection all the time. We're we're always afraid that God's gonna reject us.

And so here it is, this is Hosea 11.

You fill in the blank with your name and this is what God says about you.

He says, how could I give you up?

How could I give you up? My heart turns from it when you were a child,

I loved you and I myself taught you to walk and I

took you in my arms.

And yet you've not understood that I was the one looking after you.

And I led you with reigns of kindness, with leading strings of love.

I was like someone that lifts an infant close against his cheek,

stooping down. I was the one who gave you your food.

And so how could I treat you or deal with you like an enemy?

My heart recoils from it my whole being trembles at the thought,

why? Because I'm God not man.

I am the holy one in your midst. And I have no wish to destroy

hope. Community Church, if you're gonna put up a fight,

stop fighting against God's grace.

Stop fighting against your new identity as a son or daughter of the living God.

If you're gonna put up a fight, fight the good fight,

fight against your fear of rejection, fight against the chains of shame.

And even if you lose a lot of battles,

fight against the sinful nature that's at war and your heart and your soul and

your mind and just get in the ring and put your Dukes up.

And even when you get knocked out flat,

get back up in full confidence that you are a beloved son or daughter of the

living God. And Dad is in your corner

Hope Community Church.

It's with great wonder and amazement that I remind you,

you are sons and daughters of the living God, who he loves.

And with you, he's well pleased. Let's pray.

God, I thank you for this truth.

It's so beautiful and yet my heart still has trouble grasping it. God,

could you help our hearts to grasp it, that we,

our sons and daughters like that You are our Father, that we can call you dad,

even God, help us to,

to truly grasp that truth in our hearts. God set us free.

Set us please,

set us free from the battles of sin that we wage day in and day out.

But the truth is, in a lot of areas of our lives,

that battle's gonna be a lifelong battle. And so in the meantime,

could you free us from shame?

Could you free us from the constant fear of rejection that one day we're just

gonna go too far and then you're gonna look at us and say, no more,

God set us free from that God, for anyone in the room,

and I'm one of 'em whose heart still struggles to fully grasp this God,

could you help us? Could you do what only your spirit does?

Could you do what the job of your spirit is?

Could you testify to our spirits that we are truly your sons and daughters and

that you are truly our Father? God, please do that in our hearts.

A sermon can't do that. A song can't do that. Only you can do that.

So please teach us something new about yourself. God,

I love you very much and I pray this in the name of Jesus.

He was your first son. He was our is our Lord,

and he's our savior and in a way that I can't even totally grasp yet,

he is our co-heir and our brother, and it's in his holy name that I pray.

Amen.

You hear it said around here often that the church is a family of families.

And if you heard tonight,

the little tug on your heart that you know I wanna be a part of this kingdom,

family of God and seeing myself as a son, seeing myself as a daughter,

would I encourage you that today is the day to give your life to Christ.

And we would love to talk to you about that decision.

You can come to next steps and we could talk to you.

You can drop a chat there online no matter where you are.

Jesus is the answer to come and be a part of the family of God.

Hope Community Church has been so good to gather together with you.

Before we part,

I wanna remind you that you can participate in what God is doing here and

through Hope Community Church, through the act of Giving.

There are multiple ways that you can give and participate in everything that God

is up to.

It is a wonderful gift to see you today and to be together today as a family.

Hope Community Church. We love you and we'll see you next week.